Episode 5 - Missions/Tactics *SPOILERS*

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Unknown Enemy

In 'reality' you'd land on the Tarawa or Guadacanal and Kruger would probably attempt to requisition your fighters (and yourself) as Landreich assets, and you'd maybe have a problem with a court-martial for losing your ship some time after the Battle of Earth was over.

Yeah... needless to say, that couldn't happen for us, because we'd have had to provide an alternate room for the Tarawa, alternate characters to give you briefings and such, and, well, a lot of alternate cutscenes in general. Damn, it would be great to make a game where that kind of thing is actually possible.

Frog Blast the Vent Core!

Yeah... needless to say, that couldn't happen for us, because we'd have had to provide an alternate room for the Tarawa, alternate characters to give you briefings and such, and, well, a lot of alternate cutscenes in general. Damn, it would be great to make a game where that kind of thing is actually possible.

It would...and we probably could have done it...we would have just cost all of us our sanity and would have made Standoff a contender for Project of the Last Half Century Since we wouldn't finish until at least 2050!

Captain

I dunno if it would have required all that much extra stuff. I mean, Wake-class CVEs are identikit converted transports, right? The Tarawa ought to look at very least extremely similar to the Firekka.

So you'd have needed (for a bare-bones approach), what:
-Voiceover for Commodore Bondarevsky on mission briefings.
-The Firekka menu screens fiddled with a bit to make them into the Tarawa
-The TCN emblem in various places being replaced with the Landreich one.
-Model and voice for Tarawa's chief tech...is that Sparks? Fleet Action is not tremendously clear on this point.
-A completely different ending cutscene, because Reismann is dead. You also can't use Bondarevsky in it because he's off appearing in Fleet Action at that point.
-Maybe a cutscene involving Doomsday, which would need a model.
-Different email messages referencing the fact that you got the Firekka blown up

That'd have only delayed Episode five by what, a year? For the sake of three missions? Yeah, totally worth it. Ahem.

Oh, you'd be surprised how easy it is to get away with stuff like this. The player looks at the new recroom, and thinks "uh, it's the same place, even the Lynch machine is still there". But then he clicks on one of the characters, activates a cutscene, and he hears:
"Wow, you guys have the Lynch coke machine exactly the same place we did. Freaky..."
...And suddenly, it's all right. It's like the end of the first Terminator movie, where Sarah Connor is thinking about the absurdities of time travel - it doesn't make the plot any less absurd, but because an on-screen character accepts that it is absurd, the audience goes, "oh, all right, they don't get it too, so there must be an answer."

Petty Officer

Alright, I've looked around, and havent found this question yet, so I'm gonna assume everyone else already knows the answer: in the opening cutscene for episode 5, it mentions the results the last time the Kilrathi tried to attack Earth. When did this happen? Was it from the WC movie? Cuz anything with Freddie Prince in it doesn't count. For anything

Seriously - we've tried to make use of the movie to add an extra layer to Standoff, and in the process, to better integrate the movie with the rest of the universe. One such case is Paladin's ship at the start of Episode Two - it's the same kind of ship he had in the movie. The other obvious case is the Episode Five intro. Now, you can pretend that the images you see in this intro don't exist, or you can pretend that even though they're there, the movie still doesn't count, whatever - your choice. As far as I'm concerned, acknowledging the story of the movie at this point doesn't spoil anything, quite the opposite - it adds another layer to the image of the Kilrathi as a predator race that's always trying to go for the jugular. First there was Action Stations, then the movie, and then Fleet Action - in each case, a sudden attack aimed at Earth. Undoubtedly, had the Sivar weapon been able to get away from the Goddard system, it would soon have taken part in another similar attempt.

Petty Officer

On Heating Up (winning path, mission 3, I think), I got the ace, but then I've got 4 angry Drakhai-piloted Vatari coming after me. I tried staying close to the capships in hope I could get some Vatari in the crossfire. I also call for backup a lot. I can survive the Vatari, but by the time they're off my back, the Grumwald is usually on its way down, and there are too many bombers left for me to stop em all before they get the Saratoga.

If I leave the Vatari after killing the ace they always find me and pick me apart pretty quick-like. Any insightful tactics for this one?

Petty Officer

Seriously - we've tried to make use of the movie to add an extra layer to Standoff, and in the process, to better integrate the movie with the rest of the universe. One such case is Paladin's ship at the start of Episode Two - it's the same kind of ship he had in the movie. The other obvious case is the Episode Five intro. Now, you can pretend that the images you see in this intro don't exist, or you can pretend that even though they're there, the movie still doesn't count, whatever - your choice. As far as I'm concerned, acknowledging the story of the movie at this point doesn't spoil anything, quite the opposite - it adds another layer to the image of the Kilrathi as a predator race that's always trying to go for the jugular. First there was Action Stations, then the movie, and then Fleet Action - in each case, a sudden attack aimed at Earth. Undoubtedly, had the Sivar weapon been able to get away from the Goddard system, it would soon have taken part in another similar attempt.

Point taken. Actually went back and re-watched the movie. It wasn't as bad as I remember - maybe because when it came out originally, I was in my early 20's, and nothing was cool enough. Either way, it did indeed add a level of understanding to the characters and the Kilrathi; although trying to make the game universe gel completely with the movie universe may be more of a stretch than I can make - maybe more yoga...

Unknown Enemy

Point taken. Actually went back and re-watched the movie. It wasn't as bad as I remember - maybe because when it came out originally, I was in my early 20's, and nothing was cool enough. Either way, it did indeed add a level of understanding to the characters and the Kilrathi; although trying to make the game universe gel completely with the movie universe may be more of a stretch than I can make - maybe more yoga...

Don't worry about making it all fit, that's not the point. I used to think that papering over contradictions was important - that unless everything fits perfectly, or at least the differences can be explained away, there's a problem. But that's not it at all. I mean, in that literal sense, nothing fits. There were contradictions between WC1 and WC2. Heck, there were even contradictions in WC1, between the manual and the game. So, you can't make it all fit - but you can have fun with all the sources.

Let's take a relatively harmless example (...because the Pilgrims are just such a tired topic): the appearance of the Tiger's Claw. WC fans these days actually tend to shrug this off - hey, there are five or six different versions of the Tiger's Claw, who cares if it looks completely different in the movie? Well, actually, it did matter: the fact that there were five different contradictions earlier didn't make a sixth contradiction less problematic. Rather than causing the universe to explode, however, it serves to give us more freedom - and more detail. The original Tiger's Claw had a big open forward landing deck - then, SWC gave us a Tiger's Claw with side-hangars. The Academy cartoon invented a new version, but conveniently enough, combined the 'Claw's appearance from WC1 (except for the landing deck being covered over), with the side-hangar featured in SWC. Still, it's a big mess, right? Three major versions of the ship, each totally different, plus a couple of smaller revisions (WC1: the 'Claw is different in the manual, different in the game, and different in the cutcenes; a fourth revision is seen in the WC2 intro), and they don't agree about even something as basic as whether the ship has a huge open deck at the front or not.

...Then along comes the movie. Another new version of the Tiger's Claw - and controversial, because it's the ugliest ever (perhaps except for SWC, but it's a close call). But... it has a forward landing deck, just like WC1. And guess what - it also invents a completely new feature - a big, sliding wad of armor that closes over the deck during battle. This new feature, ironically, can be used to explain the difference in appearance between WC1 and Academy.

Now, someone could reasonably pretend that only the WC1 version is "right" (but which WC1 version...?). It wouldn't be unreasonable. Or someone could simply ignore the whole issue, and use whatever version he liked best - like we did in UE and Standoff. On the other hand, you can also use the different versions to enrich one another. For instance, in UE, we had the Dauntless fire off a broadside of torpedoes - that's straight from the movie. Someone else could conceivably make a new mod that revolves around a Bengal-class carrier, and actually make a ship that looks like the WC1 version, but with the sliding armour plates that can seal off the landing deck during battle. That would be pretty fun, innovative, interesting - great stuff.

...Except that sooner or later, someone would come along yelling that you can't do that, because the movie is not a part of the canon. So, don't try to fit everything together - but don't be that guy, either .